IPMS Guatemala

The winner:

Modeler: Eduardo Arguijo

Model: SR-71 Blackbird, Testors 1/48th scale

Date: June 28th

This is what Eduardo wrote about his model:

I choose this Project because not only the SR-71 is a well known and beautiful piece of engineering with lots of achievements and records, but because it's one of my favorite jet planes and the first model I build in 1/48th scale was one of these. I was 20 years younger and finished it in one day of work...

The history of this extraordinary plane tell us that it was first flown on December 26th of 1964, so I decided It was a good way of remembering 1964.

Model: SR-71 Testors 1/48th scale

Aftermarket: True details Wheel set and Cockpit set.

Assembly: The model was poor injected, and it needed a lot of putty and sanding. All panel lines were rescribed, and this process of preparing the surfaces and rescribing the panel lines took me about 3 months.

Painting: As the plastic model was black, I made a preshading with light gray, médium gray and Brown to give the look of a very weared surface. After this was done, I applied a very thinned layer of 60% black and 40% gunship gray to get the whole surface in a way that it looked worn and not like a general spread application. This was my favorite part of the build.Decals: They were a challenge, the first decal I dipped in water disintegrated in hundred pieces so I had to apply a coat of sealer to restore decal film, Besides that, it took some solvent to kill some silvering in a couple of data stencils.